for help, was to sense that one was walking on holy ground.
But here is what struck me. The only adornment on the church building was an inscription over the door. It said, simply, (in French): “Love one another.” There could be no more threadbare Christian sentiment than what is expressed in that phrase. But given what happened in that community and through that congregation besieged by collaborators, Nazis, and others, the words, “Love one another” seemed to sum up the audacity and beauty and power of the gospel as no other words could.
One other note: I cannot emphasize enough the ordinariness of this little church. It was not a cathedral, not anywhere near the centers of power, probably not the pulpit that every young, aspiring pastor was seeking. It was quite ordinary. Yet just so the gospel was enacted there in a powerful way. Could that be the way the gospel happens here too? In Great Falls, Norwood, Mt. Gilead, Waxhaw, Marion, Mansfield, Hillsville, Roanoke Rapids, Weir Shoals, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Charlotte? The gospel is strange that way. It keeps showing up in the most ordinary of places.
October 23, 2013
Yesterday I attended a meeting of Charlotte Presbytery. There is, as I have discovered, no rubric in Robert’s Rules of Order for a howl of lament, but yesterday I wish there had been.
Four congregations voted to leave the denomination and yesterday Charlotte Presbytery gave them permission to do so. The congregations had fulfilled “all righteousness” in securing the requisite percentage of voters to leave, granting them the ability to exit and take their property with them, so there was no debate about that. Indeed, there was little debate about anything. Rather, this was going to be an apparently “amicable” divorce—no expressions of grief, no howl of lament, no expression of hurt or anger or regret, simply a quiet prayer at the end asking God’s blessing on those departing and on those remaining. A pastor of one of the departing congregations even thanked the presbytery for understanding, and expressed delight that he could now see us in the grocery store without worrying about any “awkward moments.”
Well, I hope there are some awkward moments. He and the rest of us deserve more than a few, if for no other reason than to bear witness to our mutual shame.
I understand there is an agreed upon protocol for splitting up, which in this case was followed to the letter. I understand that no one wants a court fight. I understand that the time for a reconciling word to be spoken had come and gone, and there were no more words to be said except, “Farewell.”
But the occasion deserved more than that. It deserved some hot angry tears that we have come to such a place with each other; it deserved a voice wailing that we are so much better at hurting each other and separating from each other than we are at coming together in Christ’s service and at his table. It deserved a voice that could acknowledge the death in our midst and could grieve the loss of saints whose leaving will render those of us who remain (as well as those who leave) lonelier, less interesting, and more broken than before.
There were one or two brave souls who voted against this divorce. Bless them. I don’t think their vote was really aimed at those who were leaving. And I don’t think their vote was a vote for hiring attorneys to defend the inevitable lawsuit that would result. I think their vote was a witness that what these congregations were asking and what the presbytery was blessing was quite impossible, and indeed, impossibly unfaithful. The vote was quite impossible because as much as these congregations wanted to leave, and as contented as the rest of us might be for them to leave, a vote really cannot destroy what unites us in Christ. Nothing, we are told, can separate us from the love of Christ; not even a presbytery vote dismissing congregations to separate bodies. And to pretend that we can do so or even acquiesce in such a request is to tell a theological lie.
I know denominations are poor excuses for representing the body of Christ, but as weak and poor as they are, they represent, to some extent, the energy and commitment the church must invest in the hard work of bearing with one another in the body. Otherwise, why would we take ordination vows promising to do that? Smaller, purer, fragments of the church appear to have an advantage here. They do not have to muster such energy or commitment. Leaving liberates them from that chore.
It is hard to be the church. When has it not been? We would all like some easier way. But our wealth, our vaunted “religious freedom,” our own considerably refined and cultivated resentments all encourage us to listen to our own “inner voices” rather than the voices of brothers and sisters in Christ. My howl of grief is not a howl of anger at those who have left. I do not blame them for leaving. There have been many times when that option has appealed to me too. Nor do I think my denomination, the PCUSA, is exempt from guilt here. A divorce is never the fault of one side only. And the PCUSA, in my judgment, has done many stupid and thoughtless and even unfaithful things in the past several years. But when has the church not done many stupid, thoughtless, and unfaithful things? Our ability to avoid such is not what keeps us united. Rather, it is Christ who holds on to his stupid, thoughtless, and unfaithful brothers and sisters that keeps us whole and makes of us a church. And it is that reality that made me want to howl at a meeting where that reality was not even acknowledged or called upon or celebrated through our tears.
March 12, 2014
Sometimes I think we come closer to genuine faithfulness not when we busy ourselves with urgent or even important matters, but rather, when we cultivate the power to ignore distractions. I confess that I find this very hard to do.
For example, when I am working on a lecture or a sermon, something will pop into my brain and I will feel as if I have to check my email right now to see if there is something to which I must respond. Simone Weil famously said, “Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”19 She notes further that that kind of prayerful attention is “so full that the ‘I’ disappears.”20 My prayer life, unfortunately, is not that full; there is still plenty of ‘I’ intruding, which may explain why checking my email is such a powerful temptation.
But I wonder if this problem is confined to my personal habits. I wonder, for example, if our church should not cultivate a certain indifference, or better, freedom, that would allow us to say from time to time: “We don’t know about that right now; we have no word from the Lord at the moment; we are going to have to struggle together a bit longer on that topic.”
Perhaps you think this is a cop out, another way of justifying not doing anything. “Not to decide,” a slogan from the days of protest in the 1960’s had it, “is to decide.” And it is true that far too often the church has stood by silently, when we should have spoken out. Why was the German church so silent during the Nazi era, or why were white Protestant pastors so late in seeing and proclaiming the gospel’s message for people, white and black, in the American South? Scripture knows of this failure as well: “Among the clans of Reuben there were great searchings of heart. Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan; and Dan, why did he abide with the ships?” (Judg 5:16f.) Indeed. God’s people have often missed making the critical confession when it has most been needed. I get that.
But I wonder if every issue is equally critical or equally as clear. I wonder if confessing the faith in the face of every concern that arises does not trivialize and diminish our witness. I wonder if we are so afraid of being found with Reuben and Dan that we readily address matters not out of faith but out of fear of potential embarrassment if we do not. Our words cover ourselves but do not bring much light or healing to the issue at hand.
There is something admirable, I think, about the monastic commitment to a rule of faith that allows the order’s life and worship to determine the shape of their particular witness. In the book, The Monks of Tibhirine, the distractions of the world of terror collide with the rule of stability of a Benedictine monastery in N. Africa. Interestingly, the presenting
